The present invention broadly relates to a safety covering for highway guard rails. More specifically, the present invention pertains to a new and improved safety covering or safety covering element for highway guard rails.
Guide rails, or highway guard rails, are fence-like means of protection and guidance extending along the side of a highway or roadway in substantially upright position for preventing a vehicle from veering off the roadway. At the same time the guard rail serves as an optical traffic guide; the motorist uses the guard rail to help determine the direction of the roadway. Such guard rails are presently made mainly of steel, an especially wide-spread form being a configuration of two longitudinal bulges disposed one above the other on the roadway face of the guard rail between the longitudinal edges thereof. Thus, the guard rail is substantially W-shaped in cross section and includes a U-shaped trough, facing the roadway.
Often highway guard rails can fulfill their optical function only for a short period of time, since dirt and weathering soon renders them unable to reflect light any more. As far as they remain visible at all, they have a monotonous appearance or are optically so in conspicuous that accidents are less effectively averted as a result of the diminished optical reflectivity of the guard rails.